Despite miracle cures at the hands of everyone from Jesus to Fidel Castro’s vaunted Cuban medical complex to Afro-Caribbean priests and spiritual healers, Hugo Chavez appears to be in danger of imminent death. Nothing is certain about his condition as his health is being treated as a state secret, but more and more signs point to the probability […]

The Washington press corps has been whipping itself into a frenzy on the president’s nomination of Chuck Hagel for secretary of defense. With Hagel joining John Kerry, it’s an old white men, establishment team that President Obama is taking into his second term. But many are looking at the Hagel pick as a sign that […]

2012 saw the passing of a great development economist, Albert O. Hirschman, at the age of 97.Development economists spend their time these days performing randomized controlled experiments, in which a particular intervention like co-payments for mosquito bed nets are introduced into one group of villages and not into another matched set. This approach establishes causality […]

As the Yule Blogging wound down this week, our two non-Christmas essays focused on prospects for an Israeli-Palestinian peace and on the real deficit we’re facing as a nation.In the former, we argued that if Obama wanted to achieve some sort of breakthrough in the peace process, he would have to focus his energies on […]

Starting in 2008, California implemented several Medicaid cuts aimed at putting the system on a more sustainable footing. In a particularly controversial move, the state proposed to reduce Medicaid payments to doctors and other health care professionals by 10%, and the health sector has been fighting it ever since. Recently CA’s 9th circuit court of […]

We’ve been hearing a lot lately about California’s return to fiscal solvency thanks to a round of tax hikes; the ‘one percent’ of Californians are, we have been told, happy to pay their fair share and to participate in the rescue of the Golden State.That’s what the politicians say; some of the actual taxpayers dissent. […]

By 2050, the global population is predicted to hit 9 billion people, and demand for agricultural crops is expected to double. Could catastrophe be looming as population growth finally outstrips our ability to feed all these new mouths? A study published in Nature last month is adding grist to the alarmist mill (read excerpts on […]

As 2013 gets underway, many of us are now back at work, or back to searching for work, having spent the previous week with family and friends. No doubt many around the country suffered delays, traffic, and disruptive weather along the way. Via Meadia knows that few things in life are as frustrating as delays, lines, and […]

This is the twelfth day of Christmas and so the Yule Blog is drawing to a close for another year. As always, it’s a nice break from the regular blogging and a way to mark the holidays.The Christmas season ends on a high note, with the Feast of the Epiphany — also known as Three […]

From the FT, reporting on the consequences of the fall in the Egyptian currency: At a central Cairo produce market, vendors have increased prices for green beans by 33 per cent, tomatoes by 50 per cent and zucchini and bananas by 100 per cent. Imported coffee prices have risen more than 20 per cent. The […]